COUNTDOWN: THE YEAR’S MAJOR WINONA NEWS
No. 10: A new jail or else
The clock kept ticking toward a September 2021 deadline to replace the county jail or have the state Corrections Department decertify and shut the jail down. Months of jawboning settled mostly on three options – 40 beds, 78 beds or 98 beds. Through the process two county commissioners, Steve Jacob and Marcia Ward, dragged their feet consistently, mostly on fiscal grounds. At one point Jacob even favored having no jail at all: “Let them shut it down,” he said in effect. Jacob backed off when it was pointed out that shuttling prisoners to adjoining counties jails would costlier than a new jail. Gradually a majority of the Board seemed settled on $25 million but lots of detail remained in the air. Come September, what will the state do? Clearly construction will take longer.
Jail saga
The Winona jail was built in 1978 to standards that date back to 1910. The state Corrections Department of Corrections reclassified the jail as a 90-day jail facility in 2016. By 2018 the Corrections Department was frustrated at county inaction and announced it would close the jail at the end of September 2021.